In Our Back Yard Yesterday
“But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.
You must have shadow and light source both.”
–Rumi
Light Cuts Through the Darkness!
In Our Back Yard Yesterday
“But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.
You must have shadow and light source both.”
–Rumi
Light in a field of darkness–WOW
Reply to your Medium content posted today . . . In what other ways am I perpetuating evil and inaccurate beliefs? Marlena Fiol asked… what other ways? To start, Colorism in our language. Color bigotry has been deeply woven in many societies for hundreds of years. White supremacist thinking mixed with an ongoing careless smear campaign against all forms of darkness. I am so tired of behaving as if the words I hear, read, etc. do not insult, degrade, demean & erode the confidence of a group of people. It’s actually exhausting to witness the careful way we protect casts of people and the words connected to some, while demeaning those darkly melanated- of us as a people, referenced as Black when slurs are hurled around -(which just occurred to me during a telemedicine meeting - A woman asked if any webcams could be procured for clinical staff who were in need of supply? “We need to check the black market, or on the dark web to seek cameras”- all laugh- yet, it makes my chest tight - I feel shortness of breath. I try to coach myself and try to seek to silence the pain, to act desensitized and have a challenging time barreling through the endeavor while a crowd is laughing. These references to darkness commingled with negativity are created purposely to discount Blackness, to criminalize, and make commonplace the shroud of suspicion. It is the reason why so many people clutch their purses - the figurative clutch occurs because we have been condition to fear us. Fear our brand as a whole. I asked that we be mindful of the labels and titles we all use, to understand that people have feelings about what they hear, see, ingest. I believe that Colorism is so destructive to our thinking, if anything is darker it’s obviously worse. When it comes to complexion (think), whether it comes to our conversation (word selection) we must think about what we are contributing to devalue other human beings. Thank you for your work.
Thank you for this very thoughtful and thought-provoking response, Share! After seeing your response yesterday on Medium.com, I have decided to pull my original post on A Horrible Hidden Form of Racism and re-post it with some of the comments I’ve received. It is an important discussion. And I thank you for your part in it!
p.s. I have checked my podcast schedule for this season, which is on Forgiveness and Reconciliation. The two last shows of the season (July 27 and August 10) explicitly address the wounds caused by racism (and other isms) with my guests Tom deWolf and Arno Michaelis. That’s when I will bring the post on “A Horrible Hidden Form of Racism” back to the forefront.